How do microplastics and pharmaceutical medications affect the safety of the nation’s tap water? It’s a question the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will try to answer for the first time.

Officials are calling it a “major win” for the “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, movement championed by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yet it could take years for any regulations to take effect—if they’re proposed at all. “With this effort, the Trump EPA is advancing gold standard science to inform policy and ensure the best possible outcomes so parents can feel confident filling their children’s glasses at the kitchen sink,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at a news briefing Thursday.

The agency has added microplastics and pharmaceutical medications to the drinking water Contaminant Candidate List, or CCL, a list of potential contaminants in public water systems that are not currently regulated. Once the list is finalized and published, the EPA will decide whether to set national limits on the levels of the contaminants allowed in public drinking water.

While Thursday’s action is an initial step toward removing microplastics from drinking water, it by no means requires public water systems to do so, which could take years. According to NBC News, early research has indicated that exposure to microplastics may increase the risk of cancer, fertility issues or heart disease, but scientists say the data is far from conclusive and it’s hard to know what amount of exposure, if any, would precipitate negative health outcomes.

“This is an important first step, and I think we should recognize that,” one respected researcher told NPR. However, others who have pressed for more federal action to protect drinking water see the move as a disingenuous effort to play to the MAHA base without taking substantive action. Just last month, the EPA announced it wouldn't be making any regulatory actions related to nine chemicals that were listed on the most recent version of this contaminant list.

President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi via a Truth Social post on Thursday. Her dismissal comes after reports that Trump was increasingly unhappy about her handling of Department of Justice files about Jeffrey Epstein and the DOJ’s failure to successfully prosecute several of the president’s political rivals.

Politico says the abrupt departure comes at a point of maximum turmoil for the Justice Department, “marked by the breakneck erosion of the firewall between prosecutorial decision-making and the whims of a president seeking to punish his enemies.” The department has seen “an exodus of veteran prosecutors targeted for their perceived disloyalty to Trump, the collapse of trust from federal judges, a buckling under the weight of Trump’s mass deportation campaign,” not to mention the intense blowback over its botched rollout of the Epstein files.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general, said Trump, who called his former criminal defense lawyer Blanche a “very talented and respected legal mind.” Blanche has been criticized for treating Trump “not as a chief executive who could benefit from his legal advice but rather as a loudmouthed client whose orders must be followed.” And while it remains unclear how long Blanche will remain in his new job, whoever ends up replacing him—if, indeed, he is replaced—will no doubt step into a department that he has shaped in his own image.

A day after President Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back into the Stone Ages,” an airstrike that a U.S. official said was an American attack caused at least a partial collapse of a major highway bridge, killing at least eight people, according to Iranian news outlets. A leading public health institution in Iran was also destroyed though it was unclear who was responsible.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned of the dire cost of the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran on social media. “Every day the war in the Middle East continues, human suffering & devastation grow, indiscriminate attacks grow & the perils to our world grow,” he wrote. “The conflict is being felt everywhere. We must find a peaceful way out. The spiral of death & destruction must stop now.”

But we’re still weeks away from any possible ending. The UN Security Council is set to vote today on a Bahraini proposal that would authorize countries to use “all defensive means necessary” to secure the Strait of Hormuz. And the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is set to rejoin Operation Epic Fury after a five-day port visit in Split, Croatia. The Navy said Thursday that the warship is underway and “poised for full mission tasking.”

Here's the paradox no one's talking about: the Iran war should be sending investors into safe havens. But they’re selling instead.

Oil doubled since February 28. Historically, that’s helped drive inflation. Inflation drives rate hike expectations (now at 45%, up from 11%).

And higher rates have their impact on everything, gold included.

Still floating at record highs, it’s down 18.6% from its peak. In the middle of a war.

"Whether it's stocks, bonds, or gold, they're all falling," a Bank of East Asia strategist told CNBC this week.

But the art market seems to be in a growth trajectory.

U.S. auction sales rose 23.1% in 2025, and the $1mm-$5mm segment grew 40.8% in value.

Almost no one knows this, but post war and contemporary art grew 10.2% annually over the last 30 years with near-zero equity correlation.*

It trades in any global currency. And supply is scarce.

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^{*According to Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.}